Mostly about startups but sometimes about burritos too.

The Best Tech Conference Nobody Knows About

I just got back from the best tech conference on the planet that nobody knows about. It’s called Lindzonpalooza. Here’s how it works.

Every year, StockTwits CEO Howard Lindzon invites around 75 entrepreneurs, VC investors and Wall Street types to geek out in San Diego for a weekend, exchange ideas and drink on Howard’s tab. Big macher, nerd-celebrities like Brad Feld, Jeff Clavier, Shervin Pishevar, and Paul Kedrosky are all part of the mix.* And then for good measure, Howard invites a few peons like me to present at the conference’s Demo Day. For those interested, here’s a great summary of the demo day presentations.

(*apologies for the gratuitous nerd-celebrity name dropping)

In my opinion, conferences are like startups. It’s always, alwaysalways about the people.

As a rule of thumb, strong startup teams make for strong startups. And in the case of a conference, a strong attendee list will make for a strong conference. This was definitely the case at Lindzonpalooza. It wasn’t just good because of all the heavy hitter nerd-celebrities in attendance. It was good because no matter who you talked you, you couldn’t have a bad conversation. There were no weak links. Everyone in attendance was interesting and creative. But more importantly, all the attendees were just good people with strong values.

During the course of the weekend, I was fortunate enough to meet a ton of these interesting and inspiring nerds. Here are 10 facts I learned about the Lindzonpalooza-ers that I thought I would share.

10. No one in the world has more energy than Peter Pham (@peterpham) of Science.

9. Except for Grant Gurtin (@GrantGurtin) of Fanium.

8. Stan Feld (@SFELD) is Brad Feld’s dad. He’s just as sagacious as Brad describes him in his blogs. He is also a meme.

7. When it comes to organizing conferences, executive assistants deserve as much credit as CEOs.

6. Most people are part of the problem. Kevin Flanagan of the People’s Movement is part of the solution.

5. Tom Peterson of Social Leverage is the Forrest Gump of 3 AM spatula ping pong.

We ran out of ping pong paddles. Fortunately, there was no shortage of good old Canadian Ingenuity.

4. Noah Pepper (@noahmp) of Lucky Sort is so smart he can make a room full of really smart people feel dumb.

3. You’re not going to find a more genuine person in the tech world than Micah Baldwin (@Micah) of Graphicly.

2. Todd Sawicki of Cheeseburger has the best Twitter handle on the Interwebz. He’s @Sawickipedia.

1. When we grow up, we all want to be Howard Lindzon (@HowardLindzon). Hat tip: Josh Brown.

Love it, great to meet everyone over the weekend and look forward to next year’s Geekfest on Coronado, this time w/ some Navy Seal training thrown into the mix. Look forward to staying in touch with everyone.

Cool! I attended something as enlightening last Friday, April 13th, the “Explore Nashville” Social Media Summit. http://gotoexplore.co/cities/nashville/ While maybe no ping pong, it changed the way I thought about the topic. Kudos on getting Pressed like Freshly picked basil leaves in a Bourbon drink!

Kudos. Not only did I go into Twitter and follow all that were mentioned, I posted the link on my LinkedIn page and Re-Pressed (rgriles.wordpress). Dream meetings like this are too few and far between and may be as critical to the Great Recovery as infrastructure and green energy. I haven’t read your article yet, only the blog, but I look forward to doing so, as I look forward to getting to know some of the folks that were there and the ingenious ideas that must have been brought forth!

This reminds me of the time when Bill Gates advised teens at a high school graduation ceremony speech to be nice to nerds because, chances are, they’ll be working for one. This couldn’t be anymore true today.

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